


When Worlds Collide

by Grundy



Category: All Souls Trilogy, Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-09-21
Updated: 2017-08-12
Packaged: 2018-02-18 05:00:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 6,937
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2336186
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Grundy/pseuds/Grundy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A magical mishap lands Buffy in a world not quite her own. Started as series of ficlets for TtH's August Fic A Day challenge.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I know the cross is obscure- so far as I can tell, there's practically no fanfic for the _All Souls_ books- but I just finished the third book and my brain is protesting the fates of several characters. Actually, it's protesting quite a bit about the third book. Clearly adding Buffy can only help...

Gallowglass watched the smoke he’d just exhaled drift up into the night. One of the best things about being far, far away from Matthew and Marcus was being able to smoke if he wanted to, whenever he wanted to.

He’d fielded several phone calls from Granny in recent days about how unfeeling it was of him not to take a closer interest in his godchildren, particularly given that one of the wee lad’s names was in honor of him- and that Diana and Matthew had managed to satisfy his request that he be godparent to a blond babe.

He had no doubt Diana was disappointed that he had kept his distance since Matthew’s rescue. He doubted very much his uncle shared the sentiment.

He’d finally defended himself to Ysabeau by confessing that he’d been fool enough to let Diana find out that in his years of watching over her as Grandfather had requested, he’d fallen for her, despite knowing that no good could come of it. And what Diana knew, Matthew knew. There had been silence at the end of the line for a full five seconds before Ysabeau murmured ‘we will speak of it no more.’

She had, however, pointedly added that she would expect to see him at Matthew’s birthday party. Gallowglass had avoided answering.

He had no intention of stirring from the Outback anytime soon. So far as he knew, he was the only de Clermont- or Bishop-Clairmont- who liked spending time in Oz. The nearest relative would be that infernal daughter of Baldwin’s, and she wasn't even in the same time zone, much less the same continent. She was also unlikely to care about his presence, much less the reasons for it.

He was the only living soul for a hundred miles at least, and that suited him just fine.

At least, he was the only living soul for a hundred miles until the strange light show lit up the sky. At first he’d thought it was the aurora australis, but he’d never seen an aurora so localized- or that pulsed with the sensation he usually associated with witches. Then a warmblood had come plummeting out of it.

He was on his feet and running before she could hit the ground.

\---

Buffy was not pleased when the portal Willow and Dawn had opened up spit her out in mid-air. She’d been promised that they finally had the whole portals on demand thing ironed out, and nothing could possibly go wrong. In retrospect, she should have realized using those words was just inviting trouble.

On the bright side, at least she wasn’t too high. Another twenty or thirty feet, and she’d have been looking at injury, but she’d jumped from this height before when she had no choice.

She resigned herself with a sigh to the rough landing, and was immensely surprised to find that she was not alone. Someone- a male someone with more gallantry than sense- had taken it on himself to try to break her ‘fall’. She supposed it was a nice gesture- after all, if she were a normal girl, it just might be high enough to kill her. As it was, they ended up in a highly undignified tangle of limbs, as she realized a split second too late that he actually intended to catch her.

Her would-be rescuer cursed in a language she didn’t recognize. The sound of it put her in mind of Anya for some reason. That was the first thing that made her think something was really not right. Well, that and the fact that the man appeared to be completely uninjured despite the impact of one-hundred odd pounds of flying Slayer.

Odds were he was no more a ‘normal’ human than she was.

On the bright side, she didn’t get any evil vibes from him. On the less bright side, her Slayer sense couldn’t quite figure out what he was.

“I am so sorry about that,” Buffy said, picking herself up and offering the huge blond a hand to help him up.

He raised a surprised eyebrow.

“You intended to kill yourself falling out of mid-air?” he asked wryly, clambering to his feet without her assistance.

Buffy snorted.

“I intended to arrive in Melbourne to help with a local problem. But it seems like my sister was exaggerating slightly when she said she had things under control. Am I at least on the right continent?”

The man blinked.

“If you mean the Melbourne in Australia, yes, you’re on the right continent. But you’re about a thousand miles off. Maybe more- I haven’t exactly been keeping an eye on the map lately.”

Now it was Buffy’s turn to blink. In this day and age, most people had given up navigating the old-fashioned way and relied on GPS.

“Ok, so I’m what, somewhere near Uluru?”

He laughed.

“Further. Karlamilyi National Park, in Western Australia.”

Now it was Buffy’s turn to swear.

“I don’t suppose you’re a magic user, are you?” she asked hopefully. “I really do need to be in Melbourne stat.”

\---

Gallowglass was puzzled by the tiny woman who’d fallen out of mid-air. To his surprise, rather than thanking him profusely, she’d apologized to him. Now she was asking if he was a magic user, making it plain that she was not a witch. He didn’t know what to make of her. He also found it more than a little odd that she seemed to be taking the entire situation in stride, and showed no trace of fear or even nervousness about being hundreds of miles from anywhere with a man easily twice her size.

“Afraid not,” he told her. “Though I do know a few witches. But they’re all in Europe now. I don’t know much of magic, but I doubt they can help you from there.”

The girl’s face fell only a little.

“That’s ok,” she sighed. “You being a magic user would have been a bit too much luck.”

“Too much luck? As in, so much it’s suspicious?” Gallowglass stifled a snicker at her superstitiousness. Then again, Aunty had showed him that some superstition was rooted in folk memory that survived despite modern humans determined ignorance of magic and creatures.

She pulled out a phone he didn’t recognize, and here he’d thought that between Marcus, Baldwin, and Hamish, he’d been kept apprised of all the latest and greatest in communications gadgets. She dialed, and he could hear the person on the other end answer- clearly not who she’d expected. The girl hung up immediately, looking confused. After she’d tried two more numbers and gotten the same results, she started to look unsettled.

“This is going to sound like a crazy question,” she said in a subdued tone, “but what year is it?”

Gallowglass was startled, but then realized it would make sense that Aunty couldn’t be the only time-spinner these days- or possibly in days yet to come. When he told her the year, though, the girl’s confusion only increased.

“I don’t understand,” she muttered, in an undertone soft enough that humans wouldn’t have heard it.

“Since you seem to be experiencing a problem, and I suspect you’ll need help in solving it,” Gallowglass said pleasantly, “perhaps we should introduce ourselves? My name is Gallowglass.”

The girl gave him a look as if she wasn’t sure she’d heard him correctly.

“Gallowglass?” At his nod, she bit her lip slightly, as if she wanted to ask something else but couldn’t quite decide if it was a good idea or not. “I’m Buffy.”

“Buffy?” he asked, trying not to let the skepticism bleed into his tone. “Like the vampire slayer?”

“You’ve heard of me?” she asked in surprise.

Gallowglass eyed her closely. The show hadn’t been on TV in ten years. But the girl did look almost exactly like what he remembered from when Marcus had cajoled him into watching a few episodes so he’d have someone else to laugh with about it. Her hairstyle had changed, and her eyes a little different, but aside from that, she could pass for Buffy Summers.

“What’s in Melbourne?” he asked. “A convention?”

She frowned.

“A demon clan running amok,” she replied, suspicion not quite entirely concealed from vampire ears- or eyes. “They killed one Slayer and injured another.”

Gallowglass almost didn’t take her seriously, except for one important detail- he didn’t know any way someone playing at being a fictional character could appear out of thin air a hundred miles from the nearest town with no sign of a vehicle anywhere nearby. Real witches wouldn’t deal with wannabes.

He just hoped she didn’t attack him when he pointed out the obvious.

“I hate to say it, Buffy, but your problem might be a little bigger than I thought,” he said gently. “You’re more than just miles away from where you meant to be.”

She looked at him for only a split second before she got it.

“What- oh, no.” She seemed to deflate a little as she realized what he meant. “I’m in a different dimension?”

He nodded, impressed that she seemed to be a little quicker on the uptake what he remembered seeing. Then again, maybe the episodes he’d seen hadn’t shown her at her best. Her mother had just died. Or possibly she’d put the intervening years to good use- she hadn’t taken exception to the year when he’d said it. If time had run the same for her, she had another decade of experience under her stylish belt.

“But you recognized me!” she protested.

He’d never been so pleased to be a vampire- his kind of vampire- as he was now. He had a feeling she was not going to take this next bit well.

“There used to be a show on TV-”

As her eyes widened in outrage, Gallowglass decided with a small sigh that it might be just as well there were no other creatures within a hundred miles. Just when he’d thought he was done with warmblood women turning his life topsy-turvy...


	2. No Laughing Matter

Marcus Whitmore had just closed the door of his London house behind Diana and Matthew and was eagerly anticipating some alone time with Phoebe when the phone rang. He groaned and reached for the damn thing to silence it.

He would have ignored the call if he hadn’t seen the caller. No one else in the family had heard from the Gael since Matthew’s recovery had been assured- well, aside from Ysabeau, who had not been pleased with how the contact had gone.

He gave his mate an apologetic glance.

“I’m sorry, love, but it’s Gallowglass.”

Phoebe’s scowl of annoyance cleared at once.

“You should take it, then. He hasn’t called anyone since he disappeared.”

“He called Ysabeau,” Marcus muttered as he pressed the phone to take the call.

Phoebe shook her head, mouthing ‘Ysabeau called _him_.’

Marcus had to acknowledge that was a different kettle of fish. His grandmother had definite opinions on proper conduct, and Phillipe’s grandson had broken a good many of them lately.

“Gallowglass? Where the hell are you?”

He frowned in confusion at the urgent question the elder vampire had called to ask.

“I think I’ve seen episodes from every season of the series, but I wouldn’t say I know it that well. Phoebe’s watched the whole thing, though. Why?”

He looked over at Phoebe, who was trying not to show annoyance that since she was not yet a vampire, she couldn’t effortlessly hear both sides of the conversation.

“How much of Buffy’s life did Buffy the Vampire Slayer cover?” he repeated.

Phoebe giggled. That was hardly something she would have expected Gallowglass to care about.

“Everything from the time she moved to Sunnydale to its collapse,” she replied. “I think there’s a comic book series too, but not everyone agrees whether the comics count. I’ve never read them.”

Marcus, being a vampire, could hear the reaction on Gallowglass’ end of the connection as he repeated the answer to his companion. She sounded to be on the edge of hyperventilating.

“Gallowglass?” Marcus asked in concern. “I don’t know why that’s so upsetting to your lady friend, and it sounds as though it’s not your tale to tell, but I think you’d better get off the phone and take care of her.”

He paused, but since the question seemed quite urgent, he passed it on to Phoebe. He couldn’t imagine why it was important, though.

“When you say everything, did it include sexual relationships?” he asked, suppressing laughter

Phoebe nodded, and he handed her the phone, deciding it was silly to keep relaying the conversation at both ends for the benefit of warmbloods.

“Yep. Angel, Parker, Riley, Spike. Oh, and someplace in high school I think she dated a guy who later turned out to be gay.”

Marcus wasn’t sure if Phoebe caught it or not, but he clearly heard Gallowglass’s companion’s reaction.

“Gallowglass? I’m not sure what trouble you’ve found Down Under, but it sounds like you should bring her to London to meet the family,” he suggested.

From the other end of the phone, he heard, “Oh, god. _Fuck._ Give me the phone!”

Immeadiately after, Gallowglass instructed Phoebe to make Marcus leave the room if he knew what was good for him. Marcus left only because he was sure he’d hear the whole tale at some point.

What on Earth had his cousin stumbled across out in the middle of nowhere?

\---

Buffy was still in shock, ten minutes after Gallowglass had ended the call.

“Oh god. The whole world knowing what I did to celebrate my seventeenth birthday is bad enough, but Parker? And the whole carnival of bad decisions with Spike? Why?”

She was holding her head in her hands and looked so mortified that Gallowglass was at a loss for what to do. On the bright side, she wasn’t weeping.

To Buffy, the worst part of her current situation was not that she was stranded in another dimension and facing the prospect of being stuck there unless her family could find some way to pull her back- Gallowglass had admitted quickly that while he had heard of witches able to travel through time, unless the witches had kept one hell of a secret, they couldn’t move between worlds the way Buffy had.

No, to Buffy, the worst part of her situation was that thanks to her life being a television show here, all manner of what would normally be private matters were public knowledge. Anyone with access to the internet could find out about her darkest moments- at least, her darkest moments up until the end of Sunnydale.

A few moments with Google had proved to Buffy’s satisfaction that the comics did not match her life- they seemed to be a fanciful take on how she and her family might have moved on with their lives. The relief she’d shown at that discovery told Gallowglass that there were other tales she was happy to be able to keep to herself.

He understood. For a vampire, such a loss of privacy, having one’s secrets paraded before the world and publicly available to the entire world was unthinkable. Wars had been fought over breaches of privacy that paled in comparison to this.

He tossed another log onto the campfire. They’d gotten close enough to civilization to get cell phone reception, but not close enough to have to deal with people just yet. He was congratulating himself on that decision, because it was clear that the last thing Buffy wanted right now was people.

She seemed to accept him easily enough, though she had been initially skeptical at his claim to be a vampire. She’d been even more thrown by the idea that staking vampires didn’t work in his dimension. She’d tried very hard to credit his explanation of vampire biology as it worked here, but he could see the idea that vampire flesh was so much more durable than human flesh just did not compute for her.

He supposed it was a bit like his shock at learning that the vampires of her dimension were soulless creatures every bit as evil as the show had depicted them- and worse. She’d told him a few tales of things she had seen since leaving the wreckage of Sunnydale behind. More than one of them had him growling deep in his throat, reacting to them as though they were a threat he could actually deal with. That, as much as anything else, had served to reassure her that her initial assessment of him- not evil- had not been wrong.

He’d finally soothed her remaining doubts about his sort of vampire by letting her attempt to stake him- with a promise that she would not aim for the heart, just in case it was not vampire flesh, but wood in her dimension that was different. The promise had been Buffy’s idea, and not something that had occurred to him before she said it. It reassured him that despite her youthful appearance, she was more experienced than the TV teenager. His only precaution was to take off his shirt, so as not to ruin it.

The look of utter bemusement on her face when her stake had splintered on contact with him had more than made up for the pain. He had laughed at her expression- he couldn’t help it, even though it had been a bit like taking a punch from Baldwin. It turned out that ‘strength and skill to stand against the vampires’ the show had spoken of wasn’t exaggerated. And punches from Baldwin didn’t come with splinters, which an instantly contrite Buffy had spent the next twenty minutes helping him pull out of his chest while apologizing.

It was just as he’d been allowing himself to enjoy the feeling of her warm little hands on his bare chest that she’d thought to ask just how much of her life had been shown on television.

He hadn’t known- Marcus had gotten him to watch only a few episodes, mostly so they could laugh at the ridiculous notions the show’s writers had about creatures. Except it turned out the show had been quite accurate about the creatures of her dimension. He hadn’t known that at the time, though. He’d laughed at it as Marcus had expected, and promptly forgotten most of the details.

So he had done the logical thing and called Marcus.

Buffy had gotten her answer. But now he wasn’t sure he’d be able to convince her to accompany him to London or Sept Tours to see if his family could be of help returning her to her native dimension. Not after hearing how much detail Phoebe knew about her sex life.

He didn’t know it in quite as much detail as Phoebe, but he’d heard enough to piece it together. Oddly enough, the girl who was charged with slaying vampires had ended up sleeping with two of them. But the way she spoke of them made it clear that both had their souls- which to her seemed to be the important part. More important to Gallowglass was that both relationships were past tense.

A selfish part of him, which he made sure to keep locked away and swore to himself he would not allow to ruin the girl’s chances of returning to her home, wouldn’t mind at all if Buffy Summers was here to stay.


	3. Travelling Light

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was originally two very short ficlets, but I think they work as one chapter now that I have time to edit.

Buffy’s jaw dropped as she realized that they were not flying coach from Perth. The way she and her new friend had been living the past few weeks, camping out, cooking for themselves, hiking and hitchhiking back to civilization, she has assumed they would be stuffed into cheap seats and had already been looking forward to the stopover, because there was no way they were flying non-stop from Perth to London.

But this was definitely a private lounge they’d just been ushered into- “your plane will not ready for another hour, sir, please make yourself comfortable”- and neither she nor Gallowglass had anything like a ticket in their hands. The deference being shown to her companion would make any casual observer think he was either a rock star or royalty.

She waited until the attendant had left, leaving them alone in the lounge, before she raised an eyebrow at her companion.

“Gallowglass? What gives?” she asked.

He grinned, looking more boyish than she’d seen him yet.

“One of the best things about being a de Clermont is the perks when you travel,” he said happily.

“De Clermont… that’s your family, right?” Buffy said thoughtfully. She hadn’t quite worked out what was going on, but she did know that something had happened to make Gallowglass want to put serious distance between himself and his relatives. It was puzzling, because he spoke of most of them affectionately.

He nodded.

“Yep,” he said. “De Clermont, and there’s a branch called Bishop-Clairmont You’ll meet quite a few of them in London. Everyone’s gathering for my uncle’s birthday party. I think you’ll like them- well, most of them.”

“And your family always travel like this?” Buffy asked, unwilling to be distracted from what was, to her mind, the main point.

Gallowglass nodded.

“Being in closed spaces with a large number of humans for hours is not particularly pleasant for us,” he said. “And it’s not like we don’t have the money to burn.”

“So this isn’t you blowing your savings or anything,” Buffy said slowly.

Gallowglass blinked.

“Good god, no,” he said, sounding surprised. “When you have a lot of time for your investments to mature, your bank accounts get rather healthy. Aren’t your... wolves like this?”

Wolves was the word they’d agreed to use if they needed to discuss vampires in public. Well, she’d agreed after Gallowglass suggested it. She was pretty sure wolves was the lamest code word ever- and she was the one who had chalked up a vampire bite to an angry puppy. But Buffy didn’t feel like being locked up in a mental hospital again, and Gallowglass said the humans in this dimension weren’t aware of the existence of creatures.

_Creatures_ , plural. There were also witches and something called daemons, which as near as Buffy could make out from Gallowglass’s explanation were geniuses with ADD- the severity of which varied from daemon to daemon.

Buffy shook her head.

“Not really,” she said. Now that she thought about it, she wondered why not. Surely being rich would tend to help with their diabolical plans? “They were more about the killing things and ending the world.”

Gallowglass shrugged.

“Well,” he said, “I promise you this won’t make even a small dent in my current account. And for long haul flights, this really is the way to go. You might want to check out the showers before we board.”

“Showers? There are showers?” Buffy demanded eagerly, suddenly all too aware of the dust and grime from a couple weeks roughing it. It wasn’t like she hadn’t done it before, and this probably wasn’t the last time she’d have to camp out, but she did prefer to be clean when possible.

Gallowglass laughed and pointed her in the right direction. Buffy started to make a beeline for the promised showers, then stopped, looking down at her clothes. Living in them for two weeks really hadn’t improved them.

Gallowglass smirked as he followed her train of thought, then glanced at his own somewhat ragged jeans.

“Hm. Maybe I should see about fresh clothes,” he mused. “At least enough to see us to London. You’ll have to go shopping once we get there. You can’t possibly meet my grandmother dressed like this.”

\---

Gallowglass watched her as she slept, thanking the gods- his gods, not his uncle’s god- that there had been time for both of them to shower before boarding the de Clermont plane. He wasn’t sure he’d have had the restraint to stay in his own seat otherwise.

Although she hadn’t uttered a word of complaint about roughing it with him in the backcountry, the way Buffy’s eyes had lit up when she saw the clean clothes he’d had brought to the airport for her had told him she preferred her current state. He did, too, if he was honest. As nice as it was to have a woman who didn’t mind getting dirty, he found he’d gotten rather used to the women around him being stylish. There would be a stopover in Dubai for refueling, where he planned on taking her shopping. He knew there was slim hope of her meeting Ysabeau’s exacting standards when it came to fashion- his grandmother hadn’t approved of Coco Chanel, even before World War II- but it couldn’t hurt to try.

He still didn’t fully understand what vampires were like in Buffy’s world- not really, despite having surreptitiously researched the TV show whenever he could- but he was sure they couldn’t be as sharp-eyed as vampires were in this world. He had already catalogued every scar visible on her body, and he suspected there were others he hadn’t seen yet. Most importantly, he knew that she had been bitten before. The thought that other vampires had taken her blood was enraging. It was also useless, since the foolish creatures were forever beyond his reprisal.

Falling for Diana had been one thing- a stupid thing, knowing as he had that she was Matthew’s long before the day he saw her as a rambunctious child- but this was something different, something far more consuming. He’d heard the mating urge described by elder vampires, but it was far different to know how others described it than to experience the overwhelming feeling for himself. And of course, idiot that he was, he wasn’t even sure the mate he wanted would be around for more than a matter of weeks.

It felt wrong to hope that she would be stranded here, in a world not her own, but he couldn’t help it. It wasn’t that he compared her to Aunty- if he did, he’d say they were night and day- so much as that she captivated him completely. She was tiny, as tiny as his grandmother, but with the strength and fierceness of his grandfather, the honor that had marked his father, and the charm and compassion that he usually associated with his cousin Marcus. He'd never met anyone like her.

He both hoped and feared Diana would say that there was no way for her to send Buffy back to the world of the TV show. Hoped, because it would mean Buffy would stay here, in his world. Feared, because he was sure he would not be the only vampire interested. He remembered all too well Phillippe warning him that de Clermonts only ever seemed to mate creatures desired by others. “A messy business” had been his grandfather’s words.

He had a feeling that in a world where creatures had just overturned the covenant and opened their minds to the possibilities that there could be more than just vampire, witch, or daemon, a unique creature like Buffy would fascinate many. He wondered what Chris and Miriam would find in her DNA- and he fully expected they would want to test it.

He hoped that his family would approve of her- at least, those member of his family who counted. Granny, first and foremost. Uncle. Aunty. Fernando. Baldwin, unfortunately. Verin. Marcus. He frowned to himself as he remembered that Marcus’ brood were in town for Matthew’s birthday. He didn’t want Ransome anywhere near Buffy.

It was still another four hours to Dubai. With a sigh of irritation, Gallowglass decided he should try to sleep. He knew he was unlikely to rest again until he had Buffy safely within the protection of a defensible de Cleremont house- London would do, but Sept-Tours would be best.


	4. Urban Creatures

Buffy eyed her brand new passport. It had her picture on it. She looked cheerful, despite the mandatory lack of smile. She couldn’t even say when the photo had been taken. She wasn’t suspicious, exactly. Just curious.

Curious about how it was that her friend Gallowglass could arrange private planes and brand new passports without blinking, but was planning strategy on how to introduce her to his family like he was fighting a war.

Their plane was descending toward London’s City Airport, where Gallowglass assured her there would be a car waiting. She traced an idle finger on the seat, wondering what exactly she was getting herself into.

Not that she had much choice- in the nearly three weeks since she’d dropped into this dimension, no one from back home had showed up looking for her. Buffy was far from the expert- that would be Dawn- but from what she understood, interdimensional portals were tricky. Sitting in the Australian backcountry hoping for rescue could be a long wait for a train that might never come. And Gallowglass seemed happy enough to have her tagging along.

Out the window, she could see a London that managed to be both an old friend and not quite right at the same time. The familiar curve of the river hadn’t changed, and she could see St. Pauls looking much as it ever had. But the tall buildings weren’t the same, and the Docklands was subtly off.

She had been prepared for it to be different- Google maps had already shown her that there was no Sunnydale in this world’s California. Somehow the fact that London was still London, but not _her_ London was more disturbing than if it had looked like a completely new city.

She clicked her seat belt on for the final approach. The pilot hadn’t bothered with ‘fasten seatbelt’ signs- Buffy wasn’t sure if that was normal or if he’d been told they weren’t necessary this trip. Next to her, Gallowglass fastened his almost absentmindedly.

Glancing over, she found her companion- her friend, her only friend in this out of step world- wasn’t zoned out as she’d thought. If anything, he seemed to be extremely focused, just not on anything visible.

“Hey, you ok?” she asked quietly.

“I’ll be fine,” Gallowglass replied.

“We don’t have to see your family,” Buffy suggested tentatively. “If it’s bothering you that much, we’ll find another way. We can find witches that aren’t related to you.”

The large vampire snorted.

“I imagine we’ll see them one way or another,” he said darkly. “I’d prefer it be on my terms, not theirs. Particularly not Baldwin’s.”

“Baldwin,” Buffy said, mentally flitting through the mentions of various family members. “That’s the uncle who’s head of your family.”

Gallowglass nodded tensely.

“Never forget that he’s a complete bastard and not to be trusted. If it comes down to it, kill him, and we’ll worry about his children later. With any luck, Uncle Matthew and Aunty Diana would help with that part.”

Buffy blinked.

“Shouldn’t you be telling me how to make a good impression?” she asked, bemused. “Unless you’re really serious about me killing your uncle, in which case you should probably be giving me tips.”

“Don’t use wood,” Gallowglass replied instantly. “You saw that doesn’t work. Use metal. Cause as much damage as possible. Go for major arteries- the neck, the leg. Aorta directly if you can manage it. Beheading is always a good idea, even if you think he’s already dead.”

“I was joking,” Buffy protested.

“I wasn’t,” Gallowglass told her, his face serious. “If you feel threatened, do whatever you feel you need to do. And remember that my kind of vampire are tougher than you’re used to.”

Buffy rolled her eyes.

“When in doubt, decapitation kills just about everything,” she said drily.

As the plane taxied to a halt, Gallowglass looked out the window and groaned.

“So much for meeting the family on my terms.”

Buffy looked out the window, but she didn’t see any vampires on the tarmac. There were a few humans, and a car waiting beyond them.

The humans turned out to be passport control- no rubbing shoulders in a queue with the plebes for those who flew private planes. Buffy’s shiny new passport didn’t elicit so much as a raised eyebrow.

A few minutes later, passports stamped and handed back, Buffy found herself trying to convince Gallowglass that she really could carry the small duffel that held all she owned in the world- most of it courtesy of him. To her amusement, while he did eventually grudgingly concede she could carry her own bag, he still managed to assume a protective position while walking her to the waiting car.

“Clairmont House, sir?” the driver enquired.

“Pickering Place, Leonard,” Gallowglass corrected, holding the door for her. “And after that, my flat. And mind you drive like a person who wants all his body parts intact on arrival.”

“You don’t have to threaten the driver,” Buffy chided him as she climbed in. “He-“

She stopped abruptly as she realized they were not alone.

A lanky, pale vampire was sitting in the back, in the seat that faced backwards. He’d clearly been waiting for them.

“Miss Summers,” he greeted her. He suppressed a smile as Buffy hesitated before settling onto the seat facing him.

“Who are you?” Buffy asked, instantly on her guard.

“Andrew Hubbard,” he replied, his uncanny pale eyes boring into her. “I assumed your… companion would have mentioned me.”

The pause before companion invited Buffy to fill in more details, but she remained quiet, waiting for Hubbard to finish.

“Yeah, well, you know what they say about assuming. Why should he have mentioned you?” she asked calmly, setting her bag on the floor next to her feet.

“Because-“

“Because Andrew is a cousin,” Gallowglass ground out, closing the door behind him as he settled his large frame into the seat next to Buffy.

While he hadn’t been touchy-feely before now, Buffy noticed he kept a very careful distance between them. She wasn’t sure why- vampires here had the same bloodhound noses vampires back home did. Hubbard would be able to smell their scents on each other, since she had spent most of the flight from Dubai to London cuddled up to Gallowglass. (He assured her she hadn’t snored. He was a horrible liar.)

“More to the point, I also like to know when creatures take up residence in London,” Hubbard added pointedly.

“I’m a creature?” Buffy asked. She made herself keep her eyes on Hubbard, although her impulse was to look at Gallowglass. He hadn’t mentioned this- she’d assumed she was human by this world’s rules.

Hubbard smirked.

“You are more than human, so of course you are a creature,” he said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. “Though not one I have ever seen before- neither witch, nor daemon, nor vampire. You will be of interest to many. Gallowglass is right to stay away from Clairmont House for the time being. The Congregation would be fascinated to know there was another new creature in the world. And several members would be most upset to find the de Clermonts already working on incorporating that creature into their family tree.”


	5. Pickering Place

Pickering Place turned out to be in a part of London that matched Buffy’s London – St. James, which looked almost exactly as she remembered it from her time rebuilding the Council. A few of the storefronts were different, but that might just be normal turnover. Some of the shops had been there forever, but others came and went.  
  
“So who are we here to see?” Buffy asked curiously. The car – and, happily, Andrew Hubbard with it – had gone to wait around the corner until they were ready to leave.  
  
To hear Gallowglass talk, that wouldn’t be long. Buffy was of two minds about that.  
  
On the one hand, she was feeling a little overwhelmed by both the prospect of meeting the various creatures of this world- a world where a Slayer was just another creature- and by the hard reality that this world was similar to hers yet not.  
  
She just knew that second part was going to bite her in the ass at some point. Short and sweet might be for the best right now.  
  
On the other hand, she could use friends – or at least allies. Whoever they were here to see, they were people Gallowglass evidently trusted.  
  
“My cousin Marcus,” her companion answered. “Someone other than Hubbard needs to know we’re in town.”  
  
Buffy glanced dubiously from him to the house – if _house_ was the right word. The only people she’d heard refer to buildings like this as ‘house’ all had multiple aristocratic titles. Maybe she’d misread Marcus. It had only been a brief phone conversation, after all.  
Gallowglass smirked, almost as if reading her mind.  
  
“Remember, there are fringe benefits to being my kind of vampire,” he murmured as the door flew open.  
  
The blonde in the doorway looked in no way like Gallowglass – in fact, he wouldn’t have been out of place on a beach in California. If it weren’t for the same tickle at her Slayer senses she got from her companion, she would never have suspected he was a vampire.  
  
“You came!” he exclaimed, sounding both surprised and pleased.  
  
“You said I should,” Gallowglass rumbled, sounding annoyed, though Buffy couldn’t tell if it was for the enthusiasm or the surprise in his cousin’s voice.  
  
“Well yes, but I didn’t think you’d actually _listen,_ ” the smaller man replied, ushering them into a surprisingly modern looking living room, where a dark haired woman only slightly taller than Buffy was waiting.  
  
Gallowglass snorted, but Buffy could tell that he was still happy to see his relative.  
  
“Buffy, my cousin Marcus and his fiancé Phoebe,” Gallowglass introduced them. “Marcus, Phoebe, Buffy Summers.”  
  
“I feel like you ought to have told me some of their most embarrassing moments to even us up,” Buffy sighed.  
  
The phone conversation she'd previously had with Phoebe had shown her that these people knew pretty much everything there was to know about her life from the age of fifteen to twenty-two. Privacy wasn’t really a thing she had here. It was like one of those dreams where you realize you’ve shown up to an important meeting naked, except that the meeting had lasted for several years of adolescence and young adulthood.  
  
“Telling you all or even most of Marcus’ most embarrassing moments would have taken the entire flight, and you needed the sleep,” Gallowglass shrugged.  
  
Marcus glared, but clearly had no good comeback.  
  
Phoebe smiled.  
  
“Don’t worry, I’m sure you’ll pick up plenty just attending family gatherings,” she assured Buffy. “Especially if anyone’s in a mood.”  
  
The look she shot at Marcus suggested that was a distinct possibility, or maybe even a probability. Marcus shrugged cheerfully, apparently unconcerned at the prospect.  
  
“Fortunately for me,” Phoebe continued, “my only embarrassing moment was letting Marcus seduce me in a shamefully short time.”  
  
Buffy raised an eyebrow.  
  
She didn’t believe that for a minute, but she couldn't be too mad at the girl. It wasn’t Phoebe’s fault that she’d been a fan of the TV show, or that Buffy's life was fiction here. She really ought to focus on being thankful it had stopped with the collapse of Sunnydale. Growing up was hard enough to do as a normal girl, never mind a Slayer. Having an audience for it…  
  
She was torn between getting the entire show and binge watching, just so she could see what everyone in this world could know about her if they cared to do so, and wanting to never see any of it, on the grounds that she’d already lived it, and that had been hard enough.  
  
Then again, there were some things she wouldn’t mind remembering with a bit more clarity. Mom. Anya. Oz. Rona. Xander before his injuries and his losses. Dawn when she’d still been a bubbly, over enthusiastic teenager like any other. Will before her life became a tightrope walk of control over powers that were potent enough to do exactly what Giles had warned her they could.  
  
She loved them as they were now. But she had also loved them as they were then, and being a Scooby had a hefty price tag.  
  
In all honesty, she wasn’t all that sure she wanted to go back. Maybe it was just wistful thinking, but from the sounds of it, they wouldn't mind if she stayed. And she could have a life here that didn’t take such an awful toll on everyone around her. Vampires here were more like people than demons. Witches might come in good and bad, but it was a _human_ kind of good and bad. Daemons… ok, she hadn’t quite figured them out yet, but then again, she hadn’t met any either.  
  
What was waiting for her back home? A lifetime – a very long, and almost certainly increasingly lonely lifetime thanks to her lack of mortality – of fighting, and of watching people she cared about die, because no matter how good she was at fighting, she wasn’t going to be able to save them all. That wasn’t how it worked, never had been.  
  
Also, going home meant no more Gallowglass, and even after only a few weeks in his company, Buffy was honest enough to admit that would be a problem. She’d miss him. More than she should. She hadn’t figured out yet if it was a ‘this is a guy I could spend my life with’ thing or just a ‘this is a guy I could be friends with my whole life long’ thing, but either way, it wasn’t something she wanted to just walk away from given how rare ‘lifelong’ anything would be in her own dimension.


End file.
